36 Weeks + A Little Excitement

As of yesterday, I am 36 weeks pregnant!  We haven't measured him lately, but Baby James should be about 6 pounds now.  Becca was around 6 pounds at her first Christmas, at 6 months old.  You could say he's got a head start on his big sister.  I'm not going to know what to do with this giant kid.  Bizarre. 

I am feeling appropriately uncomfortable and perfectly happy to be sore, tired, worn out and achey.  James has dropped, so he's in position, head-down, to make an arrival in the next few weeks.  I'm dilated a centimeter, which apparently means nothing, but hey, at least something is happening.  One more week, and we're full-term!  Even at this point, though, we are likely to avoid the NICU.  Woohoo!

But this week is not without a little bit of excitement.  Last week, Becca passed her cough on to me, dear child, and with my asthmatic lungs and pregnant immune system, it has hit me harder than it did her.  By Friday, I was ready for a trip to the pulmonologist, and picked up a round of antibiotics and steroids (prednisone) on the way home.  By Saturday night, my blood pressure, which has been really good lately, had bumped up to the "you're not going to die but you should call the doctor" range.  I gave it until Sunday morning, and called the doc during Sunday school.  He said to keep taking it and let him know if it went up further.  He thought the steroids *might* be to blame but didn't want to initially blow it off. 

Sunday afternoon, I rested, took it again, numbers were about the same.  I probably should have called the doctor then, but that night we were going out for our anniversary, and Super Dad had a Super Date planned for us, complete with a night at the Union Station hotel, where we spent our wedding night.  Knowing that my numbers weren't dangerously high, just possibly heading that way, we went on our date and had a great time.  By Monday morning, after a night off from work and parenting, they were down again.

Monday afternoon, at work, they bounced back up, so I went in to have the nurse run them.  Now they were up to 151/82 - highest I've seen since my pregnancy with Becca.  They considered keeping me overnight in L&D, but I convinced them to let me go home and rest.  They ran some lab work (which came back okay, thank goodness) and set me up for the super-fun 24-hour urine collection.  I'm nearly done with that now, and have spent the day at home on my butt (mostly).  Blood pressure has come back down to the 130's (sometimes upper) over 80's (sometimes upper), so we are still watching it.  I'll turn in my pee jug tomorrow morning, keep checking numbers and sit on my butt until I see the doctor tomorrow afternoon, when they will have results from the 24-hour collection.  (They are looking to see if my kidneys are spilling protein in my urine - the other classic indicator of pre-eclampsia.) 

If they don't like the results from that, or if my blood pressure bumps up too high again, I'm guessing they will put me on bedrest for the duration of the pregnancy.  I don't know how long that will be - I'm guessing they would wait until at least 37 weeks (next Monday) to take him (unless I get really sick, of course), so that he would be full-term, but I don't know if they will want to give him until 38 or 39 weeks or what.  At any rate, none of those weeks is very far away, thank goodness!

There's still a good chance that the urine test will come back negative and the blood pressure will normalize as I finish my run of steroids.  (It's a 9 day run - 3 days on 60 mg, 3 days on 40 mg, 3 days on 20 mg - and I'm on day 2 of the 40 mg.)  In that case, I'm back to the plan I outlined in my last post (I think). 

So, like I said, a little excitement, but we are so so so so so so so so happy to be looking at these issues at 36 weeks and not 26!  Such a world of difference!